Bottom of the Bottle
by DearMyDreamer
Summary: Gwaine wasn't really in the condition to see straight or make valid judgments, but he was fairly certain there was a call girl in his motel room and he couldn't remember how she got there.


Gwaine wasn't really in the condition to see straight or make valid judgments, but he was fairly certain there was a call girl in his motel room and he couldn't remember how she got there. She was willowy and beautiful, with long dark hair that hung in perfect curls and a body of blemishless pale skin. She was a fairytale princess in a slutty black dress. He thought he might love her, and he told her as much as her dress rode up, revealing a lacy black thong, when she bent down to pick up an empty bottle off the floor.

She was cleaning, but he had no idea why. If she was a call girl, she should be sucking his dick or at least giving him life advice from the cold hard streets.

He may have said that out loud.

"I am _not_ a call girl!" She snapped. The whiskey bottle she picked up was hurled at his gut with an inhuman speed. Actually, it could've been a normal speed. He was too drunk to know. It hurt either way.

He groaned and rolled over on the bed, clutching the bottle with the tenderness of a teddy bear. The bed beneath him smelled like cigarette smoke and it occurred to him that it probably hadn't been cleaned in a year. He really needed to pick better motels. "Then why are you _here_?"

She huffed and collected the mini liquor bottles sprawled across the television stand. "Gwen sent me. Remember Gwen? Your friend who you've been avoiding since yesterday? She's worried sick about you. The whole lot of them are."

Gwaine took a moment to process that. Gwen he expected, but everyone? "Everyone knows?"

She chucked the bottles into the quickly overflowing trash bin by the door with an unnecessary ferocity. "Everyone and their mother knows. _Has_ known. I'm still not sure how _you_ didn't know. It's not like she was subtle about it."

The slow turning knife in his chest gave a little stab at that. He was too drunk to be mortified as his eyes welled up with tears. He hugged the bottle tighter to his chest and wished dearly that he hadn't run out of booze.

"No need to be gentle about it," he said gruffly.

She turned toward him quickly, hands on her hips, jaw set and obviously ready to lecture him, but she paused when she saw his face. Her jaw worked as she scrambled between her pride and being sympathetic to his cause. She reminded him of someone. Leon? No. Arthur, probably.

_Wait._

He pointed at her excitedly and she watched, unimpressed, as the whiskey bottle rolled back onto the floor. "You're Arthur's sister!"

She, Arthur's sister, _Morgana_, sighed in frustrated resignation and rolled her eyes. "Once. Just _once_ I'd like someone to _not_ call me that. For fuck's sake."

Gwaine chuckled and rolled onto his back lazily. "Fat chance of that. You brother's the mayor."

Morgana tsked and kicked off her insanely high stilleto heels. Brave girl, considering the floors weren't much better than the bed. Probably worse. "Mayor. Not the president. Nobody in the world knows who their fucking mayor is."

Gwaine nodded along. "Except this town, where everybody knows, because he's Arthur."

"Exactly." She padded over to the bed, lifted up his head, sat down, and placed him gently on her lap like a pillow.

He smiled in surprise. "I thought you weren't a call girl?"

She shook her head, unsmiling and unamused. "I'm not here to sleep with you and I'm not here to baby you. I have been sent, as an impartial party, to talk some sense into you."

"That's no easy task," he answered lightly. "No one's managed that my entire life."

Morgana didn't look daunted. If anything, there was a challenge in her eyes. She looked like Xena, the proud warrior amazon, ready to fight the world for a cause. Or, in this case, fight Gwaine's idiocy. Apparently.

She brushed back his bangs gently, with more care than her determined face could convey. He leaned into her touched as she said, "First step. Say it out loud."

He leaned into her more. She smelled like expensive perfume, a white musk that was natural and rosy at the same time. He wished he could hide in her. Hide anywhere. Anywhere would be better than saying it again. "Why?"

"Because I need to know you know it." She tugged on his bangs. He winced, but it didn't hurt as much as his heart.

"My wife cheated on me. _Eira_. Eira cheated on me." He didn't know with who and he didn't care. Gwen showed him the pictures. It was some clean-cut corporate man who was richer than Gwaine had ever been. Eira had always gotten onto him about money. He just didn't think it was that big of a deal.

"Yes, she cheated on you. For two years. Now what are you going to do about it?" She looked at him like a gradeschool teacher, like she actually expected something of him. He couldn't remember the last time anyone looked at him like that. He wasn't sure that he liked it.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. He'd never been in a situation when he loved someone more than they loved him. He'd certainly never been in this situation and married. Were they supposed to work it out? Go to counseling? It wasn't like she'd just cheated on him the one time. It was constant. She had a whole other relationship he never knew about. A whole other _life_. But he didn't want to leave her. He couldn't. Could he? He loved her.

A bitter laugh worked its way out of him, feeling more like poison instead of joy. He thought of all times Eira had said she loved him and how every time sounded the same – the one three years ago, the one last week. "When a girl tells you she loves you, how do you know she means it? What does it sound like? I don't think I know."

Morgana brushed back the front bangs of his hair and looked straight into his eyes. She suddenly didn't look like Xena any more. She wasn't a call girl or a princess or an amazon. Her eyes were soft and relaxed, lips quirked in fondness, and if it was possible, Gwaine wanted to drown in her.

"_I love you,_" she said softly, in a way Gwaine had never heard before - as if it was a secret, precious thing to give. It hit him like a punch, leaving him breathless and aching for something that he didn't know was gone.

_Oh._

In an instant, Morgana was back again, all hard lines and pursed lips. She didn't stop petting back his bangs. "Did she ever say it like that?"

He took a shaky breath, blinked back tears, and shook his head. "No."

"No," Morgana agreed. Her face turned pensive and the fingers in his hair began to twirl playfully. "You should leave her. She's already left _you_. The only reason she hasn't divorced you is for all that money you've got somewhere."

Gwaine sniffed indignantly. "That's a myth."

Morgana smirked. "Sure it is."

"I've no idea what you mean."

"Mhmm."

Gwaine laughed, but he didn't argue. Everyone knew he had an inheritance stashed away like a pirate loot. It was the only explanation for all the money he seemed to have, even though he was only a small-time freelance writer. He figured he should've seen his marriage ending so terribly, if he'd never even trusted his wife with the secret. Although, he didn't really regret that now.

"She doesn't deserve you," Morgana said primly.

Gwaine snorted. "I thought you weren't here to baby me."

"I'm not." She yanked on his bangs again. "I'm being serious. She's cheated on you, you're drunk off your ass, and you haven't made a single serious move on me even though I'm wearing my sluttiest dress."

"Maybe you're just overestimating your looks."

Morgana raised one thin eyebrow, glanced down at her (really rather lovely) cleavage then back at Gwaine.

"Right, alright. You're beautiful. But...I can't." Somewhere inside, a past version of himself was crying in despair because his head was pillowed in the lap of a beautiful woman who was, apparently, prepared to sleep with him if it helped get him over his wife, but he _couldn't_. Everything hurt. Everything ached bone deep. He didn't want to move let alone fuck a girl who deserved better than him, better than a man who wasn't even worth keeping in the eyes of the woman he married.

"It's a good thing," Morgana said softly. "She doesn't deserve the gesture, but it's a good thing that you can love someone that much."

Gwaine wasn't so sure.

Morgana poked him gently on the nose. "So what are you going to do about it?"

He sighed and closed his eyes. "Talk to her. Find a lawyer. Figure it out."

"Good." She continued petting his hair in silence, even as the world swayed and faded, like bow of a ship, rocking Gwaine gently to sleep.

When he woke up, hours later, it was to a dry mouth and the smell of seedy motel sheets. There was a bottle of water and a couple pills of painkillers on the nightstand and a note, scrawled in a thin, curly script, that had a phone number written on top and on the bottom, said,

_For when you figure it out._

_-Morgana_


End file.
